Michelle Lim works primarily through the medium of printmaking to make art that meditates on emotions and experiences that she wrestles with in her day-to-day life. While retaining an interest in print and paper, her work has also recently acquired a more participatory dimension.

Michelle graduated from New York University with a BFA Studio Art last year. This year, she decided to take part in the Apprenticeship Programme (TAP) organised by Noise Singapore. Mentored by artist Grace Tan, Michelle will be part of the TAP group show at SAM 8Q this August.

From the diverse projects in her portfolio, we picked these four. Take it away Michelle!

Inscrutable Read (2012) is a set of tarot cards that resists the construction of meaning. By replacing traditional tarot symbols with scribbles, illegible words and imagery that bear no specific connotations, I sought to disrupt attempts at reading this tarot in a traditional manner. The silkscreen medium degrades the image and further corrodes meaning.

You Have A Package (2012) takes on the form of a package that the recipient must open in order to reveal its contents. To me, mail is highly diaristic due to its intimate contents and time-based nature. In this case, the images and objects in the package tell of my erstwhile preoccupation with the burden of history and tenuousness of womanhood.

Propagate (2013) was a fun project that I created to give away during Open Studios. I was fascinated with the democratic nature of the sticker medium in terms of how it allows virtually anyone to spread an idea as they would a virus, disseminating them to others with the instruction to stick them anywhere they liked. By juxtaposing the disposable, quotidian nature of the sticker with the considerable labour that a 4-colour screenprint entails, a tension arises.

In Retrospect (2013) was created as part of my thesis show, this piece was a way of looking back at all the images I had ever screenprinted during my undergrad years.